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Brooklyn Fire Kills 4, and Officials Suspect Arson

A fire that officials believe was deliberately started tore through a Brooklyn apartment building early yesterday, killing four people, including two children and their mother, and forcing a family of seven to jump from their second-floor apartment.

A second fire, also believed to have been intentionally set, began shortly after the first one in an apartment building two blocks away, but residents there were able to escape.

Fire Department officials received reports of the fires within a half-hour of one another and said that each had been started by lighting flammable liquids in the buildings' stairwells. As a result, fire and police officials started an intense investigation to determine if the fires were related.

A three-alarm fire that officials say may also have been deliberately started burned through another building last Sunday several blocks away on the same street, injuring several firefighters and two residents. Fire officials said it was too soon to say if all three fires were linked.

The fatal fire began shortly after 5 a.m. yesterday in a four-story, eight-unit brick building at 1033 Pacific Street, between Classon and Grand Avenues. The fire began in the back of the building, in the first-floor stairwell, fire officials said, and moved quickly toward the upper floors.

One building resident, Sherrie Williams, 24, tried to jump to safety from her fourth-floor apartment but landed in a stairwell leading to the building's basement and died at the scene, officials said.

The flames trapped a family of four living on the third floor. The father, Kassoum Fofana, 41, climbed out a window and briefly hung from the edge, said other building residents who had escaped. Bleeding and apparently unable to hold on, he fell, landing partly on Ms. Williams, who had fallen just moments before.

"He was hanging, and he just let go," said Fadrea Cordice, 27, a first-floor tenant who escaped.

The rest of his family could not get out. His wife, Assita Coulibaly, 36, was found dead in a third-floor hallway, fire officials said. Their daughter, Miriam, 3, was found dead nearby, while their son, Mohammed, 1, was found dead in the apartment's back bedroom.

The building's superintendent, Ibrahim Tulla, said he rushed to Mr. Fofana and asked him about his wife and children. "But he wasn't able to answer," Mt. Tulla said. "Fofana wasn't coherent."

Mr. Fofana was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. He was not told that his wife and children were dead, even though he suspected that they were, said Ms. Coulibaly's cousin, Sita Kone, 37, who spoke with him at the hospital. "We tried to tell him she's O.K.," she said. "I don't want him to have a heart attack in bed."

Mr. Fofana recalled telling his wife to jump out the window, Ms. Kone said, because "there was no other way out." But his wife told him that she had to fetch their children and disappeared into the smoke, Ms. Kone said.

"He wants me to tell him where are his wife and kids," said Ms. Kone in an interview at Kings County, where about two dozen family and friends had gathered. "I can't."

Ms. Cordice said she woke up to the smell of smoke "like burning plastic." By then, the back of her apartment was ablaze, she said, and when she opened the front door, flames shot through. She grabbed her 2-year-old son, Xan, who had been sleeping in bed with her, and, with her husband, Louis Reynoso, 35, who shielded them, got past the flames and ran out of the building.

She said a fire alarm in her unit never went off. "If we had waited for them to go off, we would have been burned," she said. "If I had been a heavy sleeper, it could have been me in there, too."

Once outside, Ms. Cordice said, they saw their neighbor, Marquis Jones, 22, leaning out the second-floor window of the apartment where he was staying with his companion, Monique Chenheu, 29, their 5-month-old son, Marquis Jr., Mr. Jones's brother, Nasir Holland, 9, and Ms. Chenheu's three other children, two boys and a girl.

"Drop your kids from the window," Mr. Reynoso said he yelled. Mr. Jones replied, "I got a newborn." He first dropped the baby down to Mr. Reynoso, followed by the other children, each of whom landed safely in the arms of Mr. Reynoso and a neighbor, Ray Campbell, 27. Ms. Chenheu fractured her ankle after she landed on the ground. Mr. Jones also jumped to safety. The children climbed into Mr. Reynoso's minivan on the street to keep warm, Ms. Cordice said.

Nearly 140 firefighters responded to the three-alarm fire and brought it under control by 6:50 a.m. There was a fire escape on the back of the building, said the superintendent, Mr. Tulla, but not all the apartments had access to it. It was unclear if all the units had smoke detectors.

At 5:42 a.m., the second fire was reported, at 1162 Pacific Street, another four-story, brick apartment building. The building's 26 residents were quickly evacuated and none had serious injuries. According to one resident of the building, a fire marshal at the scene later told her that gasoline had been poured on the third and fourth floors to start the fire.

An initial investigation indicated that the second fire had been "incendiary and deliberate," said James Long, a Fire Department spokesman. Officials were gathering evidence on the two fires, but William T. Law, the supervising fire marshal at the fatal fire, said, "A connection has not been made." Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said a preliminary investigation of the fatal fire showed that an accelerant appeared to have been used to start it.

Six families -- nine adults and two children -- left homeless by the fatal fire were taken by the Red Cross to a Brooklyn motel. Two other families declined assistance, according to the Red Cross. All the residents of the other building were taken to a hotel, the official said.

Throughout the day, friends and family of those killed in the fire arrived outside what remained of the building. Ms. Williams's fiancée, Tywan Johnson, 28, had been in Pennsylvania with their 10-year-old son when the fire occurred. He arrived accompanied by Ms. Williams's mother, and they stood together crying, not far from where Ms. Williams's body lay on the sidewalk, covered by a white sheet.

Two men, who said that they owned the building at 1033, refused to give their names or the name of their company after arriving at the scene. "I feel more bad than anybody else," one said. "I was crying more than anybody else."